“Because,” he said, “I haven’t got that kind of evidence”—he gestured toward the curling, blackening pages in the fire—“the kind of evidence that would stand up in court, about—the other thing I need to tell you. And I must convince you. I must.”
“Convince me of what?”
“That your mother, my sister Clarissa, will go to any length whatsoever, however outrageous, however illegal, however immoral, to get what she wants. To get her way. Do you believe that?”
Derek stared into the fire. The pages had all turned to ash and were dematerializing among the burning logs. He drew two deep breaths, one after another. He turned back to his uncle and said, “Yes. I believe it.”
“You agree she could be dangerous?”
Derek closed his eyes a moment. “Yes,” he replied. “She could be dangerous.”
“Then sit down, Lovely Boy, pour yourself another brandy, and I will tell you a nasty story about a golf club.”
Derek did as he was bid. He leaned forward in his chair as he listened to Sir Gregory unfold another terrible tale. This time, however, nothing inside him rose in protest. It was all too horribly credible. As his uncle had said, the evidence wouldn’t stand up in court; it was circumstantial. But it was compelling. As Sir Gregory carefully detailed a series of events spanning half a century, Derek found himself believing every word.
Sir Gregory stopped speaking and looked at his nephew.
His nephew looked back at him, man-to-man, and nodded. “Yes, sir. You were right.” He was silent a moment; Sir Gregory waited.
Derek steeled himself and continued. “She needs to be—confined. But dear Uncle, what I don’t see is how on earth we can commit her to a home, as you suggested. We’d have to tell doctors, police—” He broke off, appalled at the very thought.
Sir Gregory replied, unruffled, “I agree with you; that would be unbearable. That is not what I am suggesting.”
“Then what shall we do?”
“I think we can achieve what is necessary without scandal. After all, she would not like to see our families’ names in the vulgar press any more than you or I would.”
“Naturally, sir, but do you really think you can persuade her?”
“I think ‘blackmail’ might be a more accurate term than ‘persuade,’ but yes, I do.”
Derek laughed. He was surprised he remembered how. Feeling minutely better, he listened as Sir Gregory explained his plan, which was both simple and audacious, and then he shook his head in admiration. “I say, sir, that’s amazingly clever.”
“I confess that I have been working on it—only in my mind, you understand—for several years now. Ever since I was certain. Ever since I got that DNA report.”
“Well, I think it’s bloody brilliant.”
As he and his uncle discussed how to proceed, Derek was chasing an elusive thought at the back of his brain. It was, amazingly, a positive thought—it was making him feel better—but he couldn’t quite pin it down and it was beginning to distract him. Suddenly he realized it was not a thought, but an emotion. He felt relieved.
What the hell, he asked himself, have I got to be relieved about? Then, as he looked at his uncle, his dear, wonderful uncle, he suddenly knew.
That woman wasn’t his mother. He didn’t have to love her anymore.
“Anything wrong, Lovely Boy?”
Derek gave himself a mental shake and apologized, “Sorry, Uncle. Guess the old brain’s so full, it’s stopped working.”
“Speaking of old brains . . .” said Sir Gregory.
Derek’s eyes flew to the clock over the mantel. “Dear God, Uncle, I do apologize! Let me ring for Hickson.”
As they waited for Sir Gregory’s valet, Derek attempted to thank his uncle, but the old man would have none of it.
“Hush, Lovely Boy. You—and of course little Meg— have been the joy of my declining years, and I would never allow a mere accident of birth to take you away from me. Besides, the best thing my worthless sister ever did was present me with an heir I could be proud of, and frankly I don’t give a damn where she got you.”
Naturally Derek was utterly unmanned by this speech, and felt the unwelcome tears start in his eyes again. Sir Gregory, too, was a bit dismayed at his own forthrightness; English gentlemen were normally more temperate in their expressions of affection.
Fortunately for the both of them, Hickson arrived at that moment to escort the Baronet to his room; all they could do—all they had to do—was bid each other a hearty good-night.
As Sir Gregory’s chair carried him smoothly toward the library door, however, Derek was struck by a troublesome thought. “I say, Uncle!” he called.
The chair stopped and rotated slightly in Derek’s direction. Derek opened his mouth but hesitated, flicking an uncertain glance at Hickson. Sir Gregory’s valet was nearly as well trained as Sir Gregory’s butler; in half a second he was out of the room with the door closed behind him.
“What is it, Derek?”
“Well, you said I should forget—”
“Indeed you should.”
“But there are two other people who know and might not forget.”
“Well spotted, lad, but there is no cause for concern. I myself attempted to make contact with the maid after I found out—after I received the report from Italy. I went to the flat my first detective had found. I spoke with the girl’s mother, Glady Slocum. She had inherited the flat upon her daughter’s death two months previously.”
“How did her daughter die?” Derek dreaded the answer.
“Mrs. Slocum told me that the coroner had ruled it a suicide.” There was a brief pause before Sir Gregory added, “Mrs. Slocum didn’t believe it.”
Derek covered his eyes with one hand and muttered, “Jesus.”
“As for the detective I sent to Italy,” Sir Gregory said with a sudden touch of cheer, “that’s an altogether happier story. Mr. Bendini abandoned this dreary climate for sunny California, where he was able to purchase an extremely posh Italian restaurant which serves, I am told on good authority, the most expensive spaghetti in San Diego.”
Derek couldn’t help but smile, but he also couldn’t help but wonder how a private eye could afford to buy a posh restaurant. Did private detectives make that much money?
Sir Gregory saw the unspoken question in his nephew’s eyes. He smiled seraphically and said, “Just because I don’t like my sister doesn’t mean I can’t learn from her. I thought, however, that California was a safer distance than London.” Then he raised his voice and called, “Hickson! I’m ready now.”
As the door opened, the Baronet set his chair in motion, threw a last fleeting smile at his bemused nephew, and said, “Goodnight, Lovely Boy.”
Chapter 25
MONDAY
Five Days After Rob Hillman’s Death
Three Hours After Sir Gregory’s Death
Tom was back in the double-viewed parlor, having retreated from the unendurable sight of Kathryn and Kit’s embrace in the driveway. He had given up trying to read the newspapers and magazines provided by Crumper that morning, and had taken to pacing back and forth across the room from one set of windows to the other. He had left the door wide open, and he glanced at it every fifteen seconds. She had to show up sooner or later.
Finally he thought he heard the faint squeech of sneakers on the stone floor of the corridor. He stopped pacing and looked toward the door. Here she came—and went. She was walking right past the parlor, not even looking in.
“Kathryn!”
She reappeared in the doorway. “Ah, hello, Tom,” she said too casually. “I’ve been outside. Any more developments?”
She didn’t wear much lipstick, so it needed a good eye to see that it was smudged. Tom had a good eye. He wished he didn’t.
“Aside from the fact that they’ve taken Sir Gregory away, I don’t know and I don’t care. Look, Kathryn, why don’t we get out of here for a while? Derek and Meg sure won’t want us tonight. Let’s get that l
ittle car and you can take me to one of these English country pubs everybody talks about. I’ll buy you supper.”
It was clear from the look on her face that he wasn’t going to get the answer he wanted.
“Oh, Tom, that’s so kind of you, but I sha—I won’t be needing supper. Kit’s invited me—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, say the goddamned word!”
Kathryn’s jaw dropped and her eyebrows climbed halfway to her hair.
Tom answered the question she was too stunned to ask. “ ‘Shan’t.’ You can speak the King’s English to me, I can translate. I’m not stupid.”
Kathryn could not imagine where this unprecedented hostility had come from. After an open-mouthed moment, she walked to the nearest of the chintz-covered chairs and sat down.
“Tom,” she said carefully. “Please understand. I picked this stuff up at Oxford. ‘One would not wish to offend’ instead of ‘You don’t want to piss anybody off.’ Everybody at my college talked like that, not just the ones who were upper-class, but also the ones whose grandfathers were miners. One picked it up”—she made a little grimace to acknowledge she was doing it—“without even noticing. Then when ‘one’ got home to Texas, ‘one’ had to drop it like a hot brick, or the family would think you were trying to be better than your roots.”
“One sure picked it up again in a hurry, didn’t one?”
Kathryn glared at him. “Tom, stop and think a minute. Then when you’ve figured out what you’re really mad about, tell me.”
“I don’t have to think, I already know. The la-dee-dah accent is just the tip of the iceberg. Back in New Jersey, you don’t put on airs. You’re smart as hell and you’ve got more college degrees than most people have had hot dinners, but you always act like a regular person, not like you’re better than other people.”
Kathryn, now well and truly offended, demanded, “Who on earth are you accusing me of acting better than?”
“It’s more like, getting ready to be better than.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, all this crap about how you don’t want to be tied to a castle and a title, no you’re above all that, it doesn’t interest you. Bullshit! It was just Derek that didn’t interest you; show you a man you find halfway attractive and you’re all set to go for a bigger castle and a bigger title!”
There was just enough truth in this accusation to sting Kathryn’s overzealous conscience, which meant that she became very angry indeed. “Where in hell,” she demanded in a seething voice, “did you get the idea you can pass judgment on me?”
From the still-open door came the sound of Detective Inspector Griffin clearing his throat.
Two startled faces turned instantly to look at him, froze, then turned an even darker red than they had been before.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said.
Tom turned his back, stalked over to one of the windows, and leaned heavily on the sill, his head down.
Kathryn managed to say, “You needn’t apologize. I think an interruption was sorely needed. What do you want?” She thought that sounded rude, and corrected herself. “How can we help you?”
“I didn’t actually come for help, Reverend Koerney. I just came to let you know how things stand.”
“How kind of you. Please sit down.”
Griffin chose a chair alongside Kathryn’s rather than one facing her, a bit of unnecessary familiarity Tom had no opportunity to disparage, simply because he did not see it; he had not moved from his position slumped over the windowsill. Gorgeous George pursued what he took to be an advantage, leaning toward Kathryn and speaking in a quiet, confidential tone, unaware that she had no emotions to spare for him and precious little attention.
“Well of course, the death of Sir Gregory will have to be gone over quite carefully. It may have been natural causes; he was old and ill, obviously. But if, ah, if—”
“You’re saying,” Kathryn interrupted bluntly, “that if Sir Gregory was murdered it might provide you with the break you’ve been looking for in my cousin’s murder.”
Gee Gee Griffin discovered it wasn’t nearly so easy to be manly toward a woman if she wasn’t prepared to be womanly. “Uh, yes,” he stammered. “Uh, yes, that’s so. But on another track entirely, we were interrupted earlier and I didn’t get a chance to tell you that we’d already opened up a new line of inquiry regarding Mr. Hillman’s death, and Sir Gregory’s, uh, sudden passing won’t stop us from pursuing it. The difficulty has always been in finding a motive. We’re checking out a new possibility.”
Kathryn’s attention sharpened. “Can you tell me what it is?”
“I don’t see why not,” the Inspector replied. “We are looking into the idea that your cousin may have come across something in the manuscripts having to do with all that old silver that was found last February. And that what he discovered was something that somebody else didn’t want to have known. I admit it’s a long shot . . .”
“I think it sounds clever of you, Inspector. I assume you’ll need someone to read the manuscripts for you?”
“Oh, yes, and there’s the hitch, at least temporarily. This is not the best time of year to locate somebody who can read that stuff. All the experts at Oxford are on holiday.”
“I can read medieval manuscripts.”
“Can you now! I wonder—it’s a bit irregular—but I don’t think Chief Inspector Lamp would object. Would you, ah—”
“I’ll come now, if you like.”
Griffin said that would be splendid, and Kathryn walked out of the parlor without a backward glance.
Tom knew without looking around that she was gone; he could hear her talking to Griffin as they walked down the hallway back toward the main body of the Castle. He began, slowly and deliberately, to hit his head against the upright between two windows, uttering a savage litany of every profane expression he knew. He had repeated himself about three times when his shoulders began to shake, and he realized with horror that for the first time since his childhood he was crying.
Griffin, meanwhile, had listened to Kathryn explain that she was not in her cousin’s league when it came to deciphering the handwriting of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, because for her it had been a sideline to her studies and not the main focus. The Inspector was rapidly getting back in charity with her, and ventured to lay his fingertips on her shoulder as he assured her they would be deeply grateful for even the slightest assistance.
Kathryn had not previously been permitted to enter the muniment room. They had allowed her to sort through the collection of clothing and other personal items in Rob’s bedroom after both room and contents had been submitted to severe scrutiny, but the muniment room was still classified as an extension of the scene of the crime.
Entering it now, she looked around with keen interest. At a cheap table which had clearly been brought in for the purpose, a policeman and policewoman were looking through files. The man closed a file, put it on a stack of other files, rose, and carried the stack over to a row of ornately carved cupboards that stood against the far wall. One cupboard was open; the man placed the files in it and returned to the table with a similar stack. Fifteen feet away stood a long, substantial library table that matched the cupboards. On it were a few ancient-looking books, several large, flat boxes with labels on them, and a clutter of papers.
Kathryn felt gratified and slightly excited to be in the previously forbidden room; here was the inner sanctum and she was needed. But when she was invited to take the chair at the long table, it struck her that it was Rob’s chair; this was where he had worked; he would never work again. She clamped a lid on her emotions and listened to Griffin.
“We’ve looked at every piece of paper on this table,” he was saying, “and we’ve been careful to put it all back exactly as your cousin had it. Frankly we couldn’t make heads or tails. It’s not just all the old stuff, we can’t even read the notes he made.”
“Notes?”
; Griffin pointed to a three-ring binder of pale blue, and as Kathryn hesitated, said, “Go ahead.”
She picked up the notebook and opened it. In a matter of seconds she announced that this was a stroke of luck.
“It’s Rob’s transcriptions. I may not have to look at manuscripts at all.”
“Trans—?”
“It’s a record of his work. See here: at the top of the page is the number he’s assigned to each manuscript, Datchworth one, two, three, et cetera. Later he would have worked out a more sophisticated system, but to begin with he was just numbering them as he worked on them. See the dates in the lower right corners of the pages, here? They’re chronological.”
“What’s this stuff?” Griffin was pointing to the first paragraph on the “Datchworth 1” page.
“That’s the description of the manuscript itself, and its binding if it has one: its size, the material and color of the binding and how it’s held together, whether the pages are paper or parchment, the type of handwriting, the age of the thing. I was always complete crap at this part, but Rob could do it all.”
This was not the sort of language Griffin expected from a lady minister, but he could see she was concentrating hard, so he hid his smile.
“Then here,” Kathryn pointed, “in relatively plain English, is a description of what the writing actually is; Datchworth One, for instance, contains prayers to the Virgin Mary, most of them in Latin. Sort of thing Cromwell would have burnt without a second’s thought. Provided, of course, he could read it. After that comes the transcription; you simply write down in legible modern letters what the manuscript says. These transcriptions aren’t complete; apparently Rob transcribed enough of each manuscript to get a feel for it, then moved on to the next one.”
“That’s not a modern letter,” Griffin objected, pointing. “Neither is that.”
“Those are medieval letters that later fell out of the English alphabet. Those two are an ‘eth’ and a ‘thorn,’ both signifying the sound ‘th,’ and that thing there, an ‘a’ and an ‘e’ mashed into one letter, is called an ‘ash.’ ”
Thieves Break In Page 22
